French power large Engie focuses on Bitcoin mining at Brazilian mega photo voltaic mission
French utility large Engie is contemplating putting in a battery storage system or a Bitcoin mining information middle at its newly launched Asu Sol solar energy plant in Brazil, with the purpose of offsetting rising curtailment losses and bettering the economics of the mission, the corporate reported. Reuters Report.
Eduardo Sattamini, Engie’s Brazil nation supervisor, advised reporters that the corporate is contemplating “off-takers” that would probably take up extra era from the 895-megawatt peak facility, which is the most important solar energy mission in Engie’s international portfolio.
In keeping with Engie, the corporate is 23.64% owned and 33.20% managed by the French authorities and sometimes focuses on the transition to low-carbon power.
Azú Sol, positioned in northeastern Brazil, started full-scale business operations this month, however is already affected by grid-imposed energy cuts. The regulation is aimed toward stabilizing Brazil’s electrical energy system, forcing renewable power energy crops to cut back output when provide exceeds demand.
Capability discount will turn into an rising problem for Brazil’s photo voltaic and wind energy producers from 2023 onwards, as a brand new wave of renewable power collides with sluggish demand, transmission bottlenecks and the fast enlargement of distributed era, particularly rooftop photo voltaic PV. Because of this, billions of reais in income have been misplaced throughout the trade.
To alleviate this drawback, Engie is contemplating on-site battery storage or internet hosting energy-intensive information facilities devoted to Bitcoin mining. This can be a technique that successfully converts pent-up energy into monetizable property. However Sattamini warned that such efforts would take years to materialize.
“It isn’t coming subsequent month,” he mentioned. “Implementation will take a number of years.”
Bitcoin miners are shifting their focus to AI
All of that is occurring as increasingly Bitcoin miners pivot to AI. With margins shrinking and subsidies trending in the direction of zero, these Bitcoin miners are repurposing infrastructure to capitalize on the bogus intelligence increase.
Information facilities initially constructed for ASIC-powered SHA-256 hashing have been retrofitted to host high-performance GPUs optimized for AI coaching and inference workloads.
Main companies are main the way in which. Bitfarms has publicly introduced plans to wind down its Bitcoin mining operations in 2026-27, changing its Washington state facility into an AI-enabled GPU-as-a-Service hub, full with liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 {hardware}, backed by a $128 million improve deal.
Different mining firms like IREN have signed multi-billion greenback GPU cloud offers with main know-how companions like Microsoft, demonstrating that conventional mining energy capability will be redeployed into secure, contracted AI computing income.
Bitdeer Applied sciences additionally fully liquidated its company Bitcoin vault and reported a zero steadiness. $BTC As of February twentieth, after an 8-week drawdown from roughly $2,000 $BTC Together with the sale of 189.8 on the finish of 2025 $BTC these produced within the newest week and the remaining 943.1 $BTC In reserve.
The corporate mentioned it’s transferring to AI infrastructure, deploying NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 techniques in Malaysia and changing a number of websites from crypto mining to AI information facilities.
The put up French power large Engie eyes Bitcoin mining at mega photo voltaic mission in Brazil was first printed in Bitcoin Journal and written by Micah Zimmerman.
